Here is a tough spiritual lesson, but one that must be learned before we free ourselves from the circle of false friends: There was once a sheep who kept crying out, "Why do the wolves chase me, bite at my heels, and want to hurt me so?" The Shepherd smiled and replied: "Why do you like to wander through the woods where they live, and what makes you think that when another creature shows yo...

The one who dares to go beyond what he thinks he can do will always meet a point where he has a choice to either return from where he has just come, or to remain where he is...in a world where he is without power to move ahead. But, if he will only linger there long enough, holding fast and true to his wish to be (made) new -- he will be given the power he needs to proceed, a power he didn't h...

Remastered Classic Talk: 8/19/15 - When we stop blaming the darkness, or ourselves, for having been walking in it, and decide, instead, to thank the Light for showing us the truth of our actual estate... then we turn the corner in our work to awaken conscience.

An inner place of safety exists. If we stand in that new position, no dark feelings can affect us. That position has always been there, waiting for us to find it. It is the place where the True Self resides. But we have mistakenly believed that only two options were open to us: to either stand and suffer, or run away and suffer, with our problems in constant pursuit. We always listened to the...

Topics covered: Imitation is fear, and the purpose of life that we learned from the world is imitation; Fear is an invisible prison, but our minds see the prison as being the opposing conditions that we run into when we are looking for freedom; You believe in your captivity because fear always tells you that you can escape; The divided mind lives in constant fear of losing what it believes will make it fearless...

Topics Covered: We have been betrayed by our own ideas about what strength is. Real strength is not full of conflict and is not full of fear; In order for there to be a new strength, there must also be a new understanding of ourselves; No follower is free. Any sense of freedom based on an exterior condition eventually turns into a source of fear and anxiety; There is never anything practical...

Real power isn't the ability to imagine and implement an endless series of new solutions to old problems, but to awaken the higher understanding that allows us to transcend the need we have to live with any painful problems at all. Which would you rather have: a big fire hose with a hydrant and a fire to put out every day, or a life without fires in them? But what we have to examine here is...

Classroom Talk: 12/6/2020 - Identifying with some negative reaction to the appearance of any undesirable character revealed within us... amounts to a kind of self-induced exile from the Kingdom of Heaven by reason of self-ignorance.

Part I: Who serves only himself in this life may be first to find a seat at the table, but he eats from a plate filled only with emptiness. Part II: If we must dream, let us long for that life beyond ourselves; for who desires things already known, or otherwise imagined in forms reconfigured from fantasies too well worn? Behold! It is the Unknown Life that calls to us from a Desire untold;...

Classroom Talk: 1/29/2023 - The more we work to attend to the need of each new moment, the more the conflict of yesterday -- along with its closest friend, called the "fear of tomorrow" -- seems to be miraculously resolved, and then just quietly disappear!